Lawmakers Want to Give Voting Rights to Teens They Treat Like Toddlers with Compulsory Schooling Laws

Newly-elected US Rep. Ayanna Pressley caused a stir this
month when she filed an
amendment to lower the legal federal voting age from 18 to 16. While Pressley’s
amendment failed to pass, the action brought attention to the place of
teenagers in society. Regardless of how we may feel about the role of
the voter, many of us would argue that teenagers should have more autonomy
and agency and be more active, productive members of their communities. The
irony, however, is that at the same time legislators seek to empower teens by
expanding voting rights, they are increasingly infantilizing them in other
pernicious ways.

Confining Teens through Compulsory Schooling

For instance, the call to lower the voting age comes at a
time when more states are tightening compulsory schooling statutes, requiring
teenagers to stay in school longer under a legal threat of force. As of 2017, 24 states
plus the District of Columbia had raised the minimum age at which a young
person can legally leave school to 18. Lawmakers in Oregon announced
legislation last month to lower the voting age to 16, but the state also raised
its compulsory schooling age to 18. Sixteen-year-olds may get permission to vote,
but in school, they still need permission to use the bathroom.

The alleged goal of expanding compulsory schooling laws is
to lower drop-out rates and improve academic and social outcomes, yet research shows no
clear benefit in raising the compulsory school attendance age. In Pressley’s
home state of Massachusetts, a Boston city councilor recently proposed
offering an optional 13th year of public schooling, prolonging the state
stewardship of teens.

More time in compulsory school settings means less time
adolescents spend working or otherwise constructively engaged with their larger
communities. In fact, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported a
sharp decline in teenage labor force participation from a high of 57.9 percent
in 1979 to just 34.1 percent in 2011. Much of this decline is due to the
increased emphasis on time in school and academic performance while devaluing
the critical life skills, mentoring, and real-life problem-solving that teens
can experience through work and community involvement. Even summer jobs have
been replaced by school. According to the BLS, 42 percent of teens were
enrolled in school in July 2016 compared to only 10 percent in July 1985.

Psychologist Robert Epstein points out how our society harms
adolescents by stripping them of responsibility and authentic immersion into
adult life. In his book, Teen
2.0, he writes that “high school is little more than a prison for
many of our teens, and the time has come to explore bold new approaches to
education that will allow our young to reconnect meaningfully with the adult
world they are about to enter.” Dr. Epstein argues that
the “artificial extension of childhood” past puberty is why so many US
teenagers today are in turmoil.

The Power of Self-Education

The concept of adolescent empowerment and greater
participation in the larger community is not new. For decades, social reformers
have been advocating for more freedom and responsibility for teenagers. Paul
Goodman brought these ideas to the forefront in his books, Growing
Up Absurd(1960) and Compulsory
Mis-education (1964). Goodman influenced John Holt, who took the
ideas a step further. In his 1974 book Escape
from Childhood, Holt promotes extending children’s rights, including
allowing children the right to vote, as well as to direct their own education.
The self-directed learning principle is critical for Holt. He writes in Escape
from Childhood:

“A person’s freedom of learning is part of his freedom of thought, even more basic than his freedom of speech. If we take from someone his right to decide what he will be curious about, we destroy his freedom of thought. We say, in effect, you must think not about what interests and concerns you, but about what interests and concerns us.”

Holt went on to coin the term “unschooling” in 1977 as part
of the nascent homeschooling movement, urging parents to remove their children
from institutional schooling in favor of non-coercive, self-directed learning.
Today, unschooling continues to gain popularity, particularly as more self-directed
learning spaces provide alternatives to school for children and
adolescents.

Lowering the voting age is a reasonable proposition. Indeed,
it’s something worth considering as a mechanism for inviting adolescents into
the larger discourse of our society. But lowering the voting age while forcing
these same teens to spend additional years in mandatory schooling environments,
cut-off from authentic, inter-generational community interactions, is nothing
more than a political ploy.

Teenagers are capable of being valuable contributors to
civil society. They should be granted greater freedom and responsibility.
Lowering the voting age while trapping them in compulsory schooling gives
teenagers neither freedom nor responsibility.

This article was
originally published
at Fee.org. Kerry McDonald (@kerry_edu) has a B.A. in Economics from Bowdoin and an M.Ed. in education policy
from Harvard. She lives in Cambridge, Mass. with her husband and four
never-been-schooled children. Kerry is the author of the forthcoming
book, Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional
Classroom (Chicago Review Press). Follow her writing at Whole Family Learning.